This is an REI co-op production.

The mountains of southern Colorado have almost always been a quiet place.

Peaceful, rugged, beautiful, isolated, so much space, so few people, just as it's almost always been.

Almost.

It was one time when it was different.

In the 1880s, they struck silver in these mountains, and the people poured in.

Colorado Silver Boom, towns of thousands sprang up overnight, railroads blasted into every secret valley.

But places like this have been alone for so long.

Sometimes like to keep their secrets.

Some began to say that there was something in these hills that would keep them lonely forever.

They may have been right.

At least the railroads never got past that terrible place they called Slide Rock.

But that was a long time ago, and tall tales are tall tales, right?

Welcome to the Camp Monsters Podcast.

Every episode we sit up here by the fire and try to scare each other with tales of that thing we thought we saw on the hillside above us in the twilight.

But the time we felt certain something was watching us, even when there wasn't anything around with the rocks and trees.

Every part of the country has tall tales of its own, legends to explain that creepy feeling that sometimes comes down from the hills.

We'll travel the country and tell some stories of the things that live just beyond the firelight.

While you listen, remember that these stories are just that, stories.

Some of them are based on the testimony of people who claim to see these creatures, but it's up to you how much you believe.

And how to explain away what you don't.

So come closer to the fire. Let's hear this week's legend.

...